← Feed
Video11 Nov 2017Rigs & DIYScience

Le tonoscope: a French home experiment from a physics demo centre

Quebec's Centre de démonstration en sciences physiques shows a simple voice-driven tonoscope in under three minutes.

Watch on YouTube ↗Centre de démonstration en sciences physiques · David Linteau · 3 min

In French, and short enough that the language is not much of a barrier — the apparatus is on screen throughout. The centre describes it as a simple device to make, which lets you produce surprising shapes with the sound of your own voice, and the build follows the standard tonoscope arrangement of a tube, a stretched membrane and a powder.

What is worth noting is the institutional source. This is an educational outreach body attached to physics demonstration teaching, part of a lecture series called Voir le SON, with the extension materials published on their site. The instructions are written to be followed by a household rather than a workshop.

Included here partly for the visuals and partly because good cymatics material outside English is scattered and hard to find. Video by David Linteau; the accompanying page carries the full instructions.

More from the feed